Breadcrumb Trail Links

Police ask for public's help in retracing steps of famed Inuit artist found dead

Author of the article:

Joanne Laucius • Ottawa Citizen

Publishing date:

September 24, 2016 • 4 minute read

Famed Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook's life had spiraled out of control and she struggled with addiction. Her body was found Monday in Lowertown.Photo by Wayne Cuddington/ Ottawa Citizen

Ottawa police are asking for the public’s help in tracing the last movements of Annie Pootoogook, an acclaimed Inuit artist whose body was found in the Rideau River earlier this week.

Pootoogook’s body was discovered Monday at about 8:50 a.m. in the water close to Bordeleau Park in Lowertown. Police do not consider her death to be suspicious or a homicide, said Const. Marc Soucy. “We just want to recreate her final moments.”

Distroscale

Soucy said an autopsy has been performed, but police are not releasing a cause of death. It is unclear where Pootoogook was last seen.

Pootoogook’s story is one of a rocket ride to superstardom in the art world, followed by a crash into addiction, life on the street and tragedy.

Originally from Cape Dorset, Nunavut, Pootoogook was considered one of Canada’s most pre-eminent Inuit artists. Her grandmother, Pitseolak Ashoona, an artist, was the last to grow up in the traditional Inuit lifestyle. Her mother, Napachie Pootoogook, was also an artist who died in 2002.

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Pootoogook began drawing in 1997 and was discovered about 14 years ago by Patricia Feheley of Feheley Fine Arts, a Toronto art gallery that began buying her work through the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in Cape Dorset. Her drawings were a jarring chronicle of modern Inuit life — a family watching Jerry Springer on television, ATM cash machines, scenes of alcoholism and spousal abuse.

Feheley helped to raise Pootoogook’s profile and sold her drawings in coloured pencils for as much has $2,600.

“I was just hit by their power,” Feheley said in a 2012 interview. “The best I have ever heard it described is they are so direct, they are so honest, they so come from the head to the hand to the paper, and that is why they resonate so much with people.”

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Pootoogook won the $50,000 Sobey Art Award in 2006 and exhibited on an international scale. In 2007, showed at the Montreal Biennial, the Basel Art Fair in Switzerland and Documenta 12 in Kasel, Germany. In 2009-10 there was a solo show in New York, and a review in the New York Timeswhich called her work “disconcertingly autobiographical.”Her last solo show was in 2011 in Kingston.Pootoogook, who has lived in Ottawa since 2007, battled the demons of sexual abuse, alcohol and drugs. By 2012 she had disappeared from view and journalists who attempted to track down the media-shy artist were disappointed. She drew attention again when Citizen reporter Hugh Adami found her in July of 2012, pregnant, panhandling and selling drawings for $25 to $30 on the street to pay for cigarettes.

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Annie Pootoogook in 2012, drawing on the sidewalk near the Rideau Centre.Wayne Cuddington

That September, she gave birth to a baby girl, named Napuchie, in a bathroom at the Shepherds of Good Hope. The baby was a month premature and weighed three pounds, 10 ounces. (She had two previous children on Baffin Island.) Three days later, Pootoogook was back on Rideau Street.

Her art appeared to reflect the torment of her life. Crying While Making a Drawing, dated 2003, shows a woman in tears on her knees in a near-empty room, with drawings of Christian crosses on the floor in front of her. Another drawing from that time period, called Evil Spirit, shows a woman on her hands and knees being tormented by a horned demon.

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Last October, Pootoogook told Adami that she was living at a women’s shelter after moving out of an ex-boyfriend’s apartment in the wake of a tumultuous relationship. She said she knew she had an alcohol problem and planned to see an addiction counsellor. She was on probation because she made a “mistake” related to drinking. “When people tell you to stop drinking,” Pootoogook told Adami, her tendency is to “keep drinking and drinking.”

On Friday, Adami, now retired, said when he first met Pootoogook “I thought she was going to pull it together. People in the art community were reaching out to her. Lots of people wanted to help.”

Story continues below

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

He interviewed her several times after that, most recently last October. “It was getting worse and worse. She was ravaged by alcohol. She mentioned her baby and started crying. It was very, very sad.”

In a 2012 interview with Citizen arts writer Paul Gessell, Feheley said Pootoogook’s fame was “just too much, too fast.”“Her vault to stardom, which was serious stardom, was really a two-and-one-half year thing for someone who was living a relatively sheltered life and not that happy a life in Cape Dorset, when suddenly she was in Switzerland and she was in Germany and she won all this money and there were three books and two movies,” said Feheley.“I think she just literally got overwhelmed.”

Police ask anyone who saw Pootoogook in the days leading up to the discovery of her body to contact the Ottawa Police major crime unit at 613 236 1222, ext. 5493.

Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-222-8477.